Part 23

Nor can the foundation of the new city in the lagoons (Venice) have been occasioned by that sudden invasion of the Huns; the place must have been inhabited to some extent even before. This lay in the nature of circumstances. Sailors, and other people of the same kind, sought refuge in a place where they were beyond the reach of the barbarians. They went there not only on account of the Huns, but of all barbarian immigrants, for there they were safe against ill-treatment and other horrors, and land was not the thing they wanted. When Theodoric reigned in Italy, they were his faithful subjects; and they were afterwards under the dominion of the Eastern empire. The discussions which were in vogue during the seventeenth century, as to whether Venice could trace its liberties to the Roman times, were silly and quite useless. There are what are called Fasti of the Venetian consuls, but they are altogether apocryphal, a forgery of the Lombard period; they contain only late Lombard names, and do not appear to be authentic until the middle of the seventh century.

AQUILEIA, the extreme town of Italy, was a Roman colony planted for the purpose of securing Venetia, of offering resistance to the Noricans and extending the Roman dominion against them, of protecting the Roman supremacy in the Adriatic, and of keeping up the communication by land with Istria. The town, favoured by its situation, gradually increased, and became an emporium for the commerce with the northern countries, no doubt, even with the interior of Germany, to which the products of the south, wine, oil, and the like were exported. It cannot be said with certainty whether Aquileia was also a military colony. Under the emperors, it was one of the largest cities, and was carefully fortified as a place of arms for all Italy against the northern nations and the Getae.

Italy extended in the north as far as Istria; but a part of Istria, as far as Pola, was united in the division of Augustus with Italy; this was founded upon the correct view that, according to the course of the mountains, the frontier was formed by the highest ridge of the Julian Alps and their whole continuation down to the southern point of Istria. In this manner Istria was divided into two parts.

LIGURIA.

The part of the continent of Italy which remains to be considered, was probably not regarded by Polybius as belonging to Italy, or at least only partially. Liguria, in the widest sense, extended as far as Gaul, nay, as far as the frontier of Spain; but Italian Liguria, in the sense in which Augustus made it a part of Italy (not in the later sense in which it signified the territory of Milan), comprised the Genoese Alps, the continuation of the Alps forming the southernmost part of Piedmont, and the hilly country about Turin, with Alessandria, and a part of the territory of Montferrat. The Genoese Alps, that is, the range of the Alpes Maritimae as far as Briançon and mount Cenis, are among the highest and wildest parts of the Alps, while the more northern slopes of the mountains as far as the Po and the Ticinus belong to the most splendid and fertile parts of northern Italy. It is not a plain, like the territory of Milan and the country on the lower Po, which is evidently, like Egypt, an ancient bay of the sea, filled up in the course of time; but it is a hilly country. Its population in ancient times was altogether Ligurian, and the Salassi, in the valley of Aosta, are the only tribe, mentioned in after times, regarding which it is uncertain whether they were Ligurians or Celts; the Taurini were, in my opinion, Ligurians. Although the language is changed in modern times, still the fact of French being spoken by the inhabitants of the valley of Aosta, and not Italian, is of some significance in connection with their origin: they have changed their language in a manner analogous to their origin. There is little resemblance between the French and the ancient Celtic, there being only some analogy in grammar, but not in words; in the south of France, on the other hand, as far as it was once inhabited by Aquitanians, Iberians, and Ligurians, the people speak Provençal, while the north of France, which was once inhabited by Celts, has a different dialect. This Romano-French, which has grown on Celtic ground, extends all over Savoy as far as Aosta, and shows that the country was originally inhabited by Celts. The Alpine tribes in those parts were not completely subdued until the time of Augustus. During the period of the decline of the Etruscans, the Ligurians spread far into the interior of Tuscany; and soon after the Hannibalian war, the Romans came in collision with them, not because they had offended the Romans, but the latter only wanted to gain a passage through their country to Spain. I have already observed that physically we can distinguish the countries once inhabited by Etruscans and Ligurians, and a greater contrast can scarcely exist. In Etruria the powerful cities ruled as sovereigns over all the neighbouring places and extensive territories; the Ligurians, on the other hand, were absolutely democratic, and had scarcely any towns. A port town like Genoa was a small place, but otherwise they lived in villages on the hills and in the valleys; the equality subsisting among them has no parallel anywhere except in modern Europe. They had no slaves; all were thoroughly free, and the Ligurian, working in the sweat of his brow, performed as a free labourer the services which were elsewhere the work of slaves. This difference in character is clearly manifested in the kind of resistance offered to the Romans by the Etruscans and by the Ligurians. For the same reason Charlemagne found it infinitely more difficult to subdue the Saxons and Frisians, for they were free people, and although there were some serfs among them, yet freedom had never been really crushed. The Turingians, on the other hand, who ruled over extensive territories, in which the ancient inhabitants had become serfs, were conquered at a blow; so also the Alemanni, who possessed a large country extending as far as the lower Rhine: they had no basis. As they ruled over serfs, the greater part of the population was foreign and hostile to them. On the other hand, it took centuries to subdue the Obotritae and Slavonians, who defended their own independence. Such, also, was the case of the Ligurians: they consisted of a large number of small tribes, which unfortunately defended themselves each separately. If they had kept together, they would have been invincible, for each of them held out with the most determined perseverance. Their misfortune makes one’s heart ache: they were crushed by the Romans one by one, just as a strong wall is demolished piece by piece. The conquerors were obliged to transplant them into foreign countries; and one of their tribes is said by Pliny to have been transplanted thirty times, in order to break up all connection among them. Many thousands of them were led into southern Italy, and settled in the modern kingdom of Naples, where their language was not understood, and where they themselves were unwelcome neighbours. The extraordinary industry of the Ligurians in agriculture and navigation, their frugality, and in short, all that we know of them reflects great honour upon them. We cannot, therefore, look upon their destruction with less sadness than upon that of Numantia. Little can be said about the geography of this people.

GENUA is situated on one of those spots which will always be the site of a great commercial town, on account of the excellent harbour which nature herself has made. Its situation is of that fortunate kind that it cannot become unfavourable even in the course of time, like so many harbours which have become useless during the middle ages by the accumulation of sand or mud. After the Punic war, Genua was destroyed, but was restored soon after; and there can be no doubt that even in antiquity it was a respectable town.

AUGUSTA TAURINORUM, a military colony of Augustus, was likewise a considerable town, but not to be compared with what it came to be at a later period. In comparison with the modern city of Turin, it was no doubt always a small place. On the whole, you must not conceive such military colonies to have been very large; the ancient Roman towns were much smaller than those of modern times; we generally imagine them to have been larger on account of the importance they have in history; but on an average they were not larger than, for example, Bonn. A place of the extent of Cologne, would have been a very considerable town in the time of the Romans. After the decline of Rome under the emperors, Italy had rather a numerous population, but in the age of Cicero and Augustus, as I have already remarked, it was certainly far more thinly peopled than at present. The population of the modern kingdom of Naples, north of the Faro, is reported to be 6,000,000, while under Charles V. it is said to have amounted to only 600,000. It is, indeed, said that, under Charles V., families were counted and not persons; but admitting that the number of persons was 2,000,000, which is the highest that can be made out, still it is an undoubted fact, that in less than three centuries the population has become more than trebled. I do not believe that, in the reign of Augustus, the population was larger than under Charles V. The astonishment with which Polybius and others mention the fact, that previously to the Hannibalian war, Italy as far as the Cisalpine frontier had 700,000 men capable of bearing arms, is too decisive to allow us to suppose that the country was thickly peopled. Italy clearly reminds us of the condition of Germany after the Thirty Years’ war, of which we have descriptions in books of travel; and that state of Italy, as we see from Lucan, continued until a late period. I have read a description of Germany by an Italian who travelled in the country thirty years after the war, and who saw the villages and buildings everywhere in ruins, and even the towns were full of heaps of ruins and decaying houses.

The valley of Aosta, the country of the Salassians, is remarkable for its gold-dust and gold-washings in the river Doria. Gold still exists there, but little, for such veins often are entirely drained.

SICILIA.

In passing on to the islands, I shall first speak of Sicily, the queen of the islands in the Mediterranean. It derives, like Italy and most other countries, its name from its inhabitants, and Sicilia is the country of the Siculi. I have already said that Itali and Siculi are the same name in different dialects, and that accordingly both denote the same people. The general tradition of antiquity is, that the Siculi migrated from Italy into the island, and pushed the Sicani, its previous inhabitants, into the western and southern parts. Those who go back to the mythical ages, represent the island in the most ancient times as inhabited by Gigantes, Cyclopes, and Laestrygones. It is a widely-spread opinion among the ancients, that the Sicani belonged to the race of the Iberians. The Sicani called themselves Autochthons, while, according to others, they had come from Iberia, having been displaced by Ligurians; but such an emigration, so far across the sea and by so many intermediate countries as the Balearian islands and Sardinia, or, if you please, along the coast of Africa, is incredible in the case of a people like the Iberians, who never were great navigators. I believe that, in this account, we can keep only to this one point, that, according to the conviction of those who most thoroughly understand the circumstances, the Sicani belonged to the Iberian race, even if we admit that the tradition about their emigration is without foundation; and this is very possible. It is equally possible that the story about the emigration of the Siculi from Italy is without foundation; at least our authorities for it are not authentic. Another question is, as to whether the Sicani and Siculi were everywhere different people; the testimonies of the ancients must, of course, be of the greatest weight to us in this matter. I am not one of those who build history upon the mere names of nations, and am, therefore, not much inclined to lay great stress upon the resemblance of the two names; but Virgil uses Sicani and Siculi as synonymous, and this leads us to infer that he probably had more ancient authors before him, who had done the same. It is true also, that such a change of form is not unprecedented, for _Aequus_, _Aequanus_, _Aequulus_, _Aequicus_, and _Aequiculus_, are only derivatives from the same basis; and in like manner we might regard _Sicanus_ and _Siculus_ as simple derivatives of the stem _Sicus_. I should believe this to be quite correct, were it not that the ancients speak so positively of the Iberian origin of the Sicani. I should, in fact, reject this origin, were it not certain that Iberians existed in Corsica, Sardinia, and the Balearian islands, and in ancient times, when the Celts dwelt as far as the Sierra Morena, probably even on the coast of Africa. The Basque language is foreign to all European languages known to us; it belongs, as it were, to a different part of the world. But however this may be, the two nations in Sicily were different from each other, though we cannot say whether the difference was one of race or of a less striking nature. The Siculi inhabited the north-eastern part of the island, and the Sicani the southern and western.

At the time when the Phoenicians were in possession of the most important islands of the Aegean, as Thasos and Cythera, and had settlements in most of the Cyclades; they also occupied strong points on the coast of Sicily; they were generally small places in little islands, headlands and the like, not being intended as agricultural settlements, but as factories. But they disappeared in consequence of the Greek colonies, which commenced at an early period, and according to the traditions from annals of which Thucydides probably made indirect use through Antiochus, soon after the beginning of the Olympiads. The colonies came from two of the Greek tribes, the Dorians and Chalcidians. In Italy, there was, properly speaking, only one Doric city that was really great, whereas in Sicily Doric cities preponderated both in number and greatness, witness Syracuse, which Timaeus calls the largest Greek city, Agrigentum, which was but little inferior to Syracuse, Gela, Selinus, and Camarina. Zancle (afterwards Messana), Naxos, Leontini, Catana, and Himera, on the north coast, were of Chalcidian origin. All the towns on the north-east, on a line from Syracuse to Palermo, were Chalcidian, and those on the south-west of it were Dorian. In speaking of the towns of Sicily, I shall make some deviation from the general rule I have hitherto followed, and enumerate them not in their natural succession, but according to their magnitude.

Sicily, like most other countries which are surrounded by the sea on two sides, presents the physical character of two different countries. In Andalusia and Algarvia, the character of the animal and vegetable world up to the mountains is African; and, in like manner, the southern part of Sicily is completely African, and the palm-tree grows there as beautifully as in Tunis and Tripoli; but the country north of cape Heraeum is quite different.

If we except the south-western coast and the district about Leontini, Sicily is altogether a mountainous country. Mount Aetna is the real central knot of the island, and the highest mountains proceed from it in a north-eastern direction as far as cape Pelorus just opposite to Italy. The Heraean range likewise proceeds from Aetna in a western direction, while another chain extends southwards. This last range is considerably lower than the others, but still high enough to form the watershed between the eastern and western coast. In the part between Palermo and Messina, the mountains approach very close to the coast, so that often two places situated on the coast are not connected by a road, just as is the case in many parts of Liguria. Hence, during the wars of the Romans, we never find that the northern coast formed their scene of operation, which it is in all the wars on the south coast, for in this latter part there are roads, and armies can move. But on the northern coast there never was any communication either in the Punic wars or in those of the middle ages and modern times. It is of importance to know this in order to understand the history of the first Punic war.

AETNA is the highest mountain both of Italy and Sicily; it had only very few eruptions in antiquity, but they were sometimes of a violence which has never been equalled in modern times. According to Thucydides, the third eruption, after the settlement of the Greeks in Sicily, occurred in his own days, in the time of the Peloponnesian war. We need not, however, scrupulously insist on this number, for it is possible that all the eruptions were not recorded, and that there had been some at a time when no annals were yet kept. The eruptions of which we know, belong to Olympiads 70, 82,[60] and Olymp. 88, 3, or the sixth year of the Peloponnesian war. The greatest subsequent eruption in ancient times occurred after the death of Caesar. A still more terrible one is recorded by the earliest Byzantine writers of the age of the Greek emperor Anastasius or Zeno. During the eruption in the age of Caesar, the ashes are said to have been thrown as far as Peloponnesus and Africa, which is probably no exaggeration; but it seems scarcely possible that, in the reign of Anastasius, the ashes should have been carried as far as Constantinople, though it certainly is very difficult positively to assert anything about these powers of nature.

ERYX (monte S. Giuliano), situated in an isolated position on the western promontory, is a mountain of great historical interest. It is high, but a tame mountain, and is celebrated for its temple of Venus Erycina; but it has been immortalised in history by the defence of Hamilcar Barcas, who was blockaded there by the Romans for years, and maintained himself in spite of all difficulties: that defence is one of the greatest events in military history.

Whether Sicily derived the name _Trinacria_ from its three promontories, which seems to us very probable, or whether this is only apparent, and the name arose from a Siculian town of a similar name (Trinacia or Thrinacia), independently of the form of the island, is one of those questions, concerning which it is best to confess that they cannot be satisfactorily answered.

SYRACUSAE, at first probably SYRACUSA, was the greatest Greek city in Sicily. The plural form of the name probably did not come into use until the time when several towns were united in one great city; afterwards, during the decline of the language, it was again called Syracusa. There exists an abridgment of six books (from 21 to 26) of Diodorus Siculus, which was no doubt made in Sicily itself, but at a late period, for it already contains several modern Greek expressions, and among others, also the form Syracusa. Those of the Byzantine writers who did not want to write learnedly, likewise have the singular. It is well known that Syracuse was a Corinthian colony led out by the Bacchiad Archias; the first settlement was formed in the island of Ortygia (to which the modern Siragossa also is confined), for the sake of safety against the attacks of the inhabitants of the interior. It commenced its career as a commercial place; and this first colony was small like all the other Greek settlements, as, for example, Cyrene. The island in the Doric dialect was called νᾶσος, and the Romans also retained this name (_Nasos_), as we know from Cicero’s Verrine orations. A suburb of the name of _Achradina_ (from ἀχράς, the wild pear-tree) arose on the main land opposite the island. This suburb, which increased considerably, is the Syracuse of the middle period, that is, under the first Gelo and the first Hiero, until the time of the Peloponnesian war. Nasos then became the Acra, but Achradina alone was fortified. By the side of this latter, again two large suburbs arose, _Neapolis_ and _Tycha_; they seem to have commenced at two different gates, and perhaps ran parallel to each other, but were separated by a considerable intervening space. They, too, became important towns, so that Syracuse was a tetrapolis. The last two of these places which had not been fortified at all, or only feebly, were surrounded by Dionysius with a wall which he constructed at a distance of about three miles from the island. Above Syracuse there runs a range of hills, and you may easily understand its situation, by comparing it with the neighbourhood of Bonn, the plain extending between the Vorgebirge and the Rhine: the city must be conceived to be situated in the plain upon the Rhine, whence it gradually extends towards the Vorgebirge. These hills, which, just like our Vorgebirge, bound the plain stretching to the sea, were called _Epipolae_. They were from early times surmounted by forts, the object of which was to protect the district in the petty wars with the Siculians; during the Athenian war also they were very dangerous on account of the great enlargement of the city. Dionysius then fortified the city by building two mighty walls up the heights, so as to enclose those forts which now became citadels. The whole of the intermediate space between the walls, however, must not be imagined to have been covered with buildings, for between Neapolis and Tycha there were extensive tracts which can never have been built upon; the quarries also could not be built over, as is clear from the whole surface of the ground. But the circumference of the city was enormous.